The founder of wikipedia criticized the Hugo Chavez article for its lack of criticism

Jimbo Wales (the founder of wikipedia) criticized the Hugo Chavez article for not including criticism of Chavez's food policies. Some of the things that Jimbo criticized the article for including are the very same sources that I had added in the past, which the Chavez supporters then deleted.

My original account was Grundle2600. I was banned by User Rd232. He was one of the Chavez supporters who kept deleting that information.

Jimbo doesn't seem to know that this info has been repeatedly added and then deleted from the article.

The person who banned me from wikipedia was Rd232, one of the Chavez supporters who had kept deleting that information.

And now the very founder of wikipedia is upset that that information is not there!

I am not going to have time to contribute substantially to this article, but I wanted to be clear about why I have said (up above) that this article is very very bad and a huge disappointment.

Let's just take one aspect of the world as it related to Chavez: food. Food for the Venezuelan people.

"Costing $113,000,000, Plan Bolívar 2000 involved 70,000 army officers going out into the streets of Venezuela where they would repair roads and hospitals, offer free medical care and vaccinations, and sell food at cheap prices." " The new constitution included increased protections for indigenous peoples and women, and established the rights of the public to education, housing, healthcare and food." "In 2010, Chávez supported the construction of 184 communes, housing thousands of families, with $23 million in government funding. The communes produce some of their own food, and are able to make decisions by popular assembly of what to do with government funds." In the section on human rights: "In the 1999 Venezuelan constitution, 116 of 300 articles were concerned with human rights; these included increased protections for indigenous peoples and women, and established the rights of the public to education, housing, healthcare, and food."

So everything we learn about Chavez and food from Wikipedia sounds positive and helpful to the poor. Twice we mention that the constitution gives rights to food. Once we hear that he had the military out selling food at cheap prices, wow, talk about swords into ploughshares! And we hear about his funding for communes that produce some of their own food.

Venezuelan shoppers face food shortages, BBC, January 10, 2006 "But nearly five years after the measures were implemented nationwide, farmers and agriculture experts say, Venezuela is not only far from self-sufficient in food, but also more dependent than ever on foreign countries. " Washington Post "Under state ownership, though, production has suffered. From 1999 to 2008, per capita, sugar cane was off by 8%, fruit declined by 25%, and beef production dropped by 38%, according to Carlos Machado, an expert in agriculture at the Institute of Higher Administrative Studies, a business school in Caracas. "The cooperatives have failed and our cattle ranching has been decimated," Machado says." A Food Fight for Hugo Chavez From 4 days ago: "“There’s still going to be speculation and shortages, and who will suffer the most? He who has the least..." Bloomberg News

The facts of reality are being systematically obscured here. A reader of this article would naturally be impressed with how Chavez appears to have been achieving a certain kind of socialist dream. That it is in fact, as evidence plainly in reliable sources, not quite so rosy, is something that we have kept carefully hidden.

This is just one issue, food, which I picked more or less randomly. The article is a disaster.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:44, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales (the founder of wikipedia) just reinserted my info back into the article!!!

This is what he added:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez&action=historysubmit&diff=464215115&oldid=464071566

Since 2003, Chavez has been setting strict price controls on food, and these price controls have been causing shortages and hoarding.[260] In January 2008, Chavez ordered the military to seize 750 tons of food that sellers were illegally trying to smuggle across the border to sell for higher prices than what was legal in Venezuela.[261] In February 2009, Chavez ordered the military to temporarily seize control of all the rice processing plants in the country and force them to produce at full capacity, which he claimed they had been avoiding in response to the price caps.[262] In May 2010, Chavez ordered the military to seize 120 tons of food from Empresas Polar.[263] In March 2009, Chavez set minimum production quotas for 12 basic foods that were subject to price controls, including white rice, cooking oil, coffee, sugar, powdered milk, cheese, and tomato sauce. Business leaders and food producers claimed that the government was forcing them to produce this food at a loss.[264] Chávez has nationalized many large farms. Chávez said of the farmland, "The land is not private. It is the property of the state." Some of the farmland that had been productive while under private ownership is now idle under government ownership, and some of the farm equipment sits gathering dust. As a result, food production has fallen substantially. One farmer, referring to the government officials overseeing the land redistribution, stated, "These people know nothing about agriculture."[265] Chávez has seized many supermarkets from their owners. Under government ownership, the shelves in these supermarkets are often empty.[266] In 2010, after the government nationalized the port at Puerto Cabello, more than 120,000 tons of food sat rotting at the port.[267] In May 2010, after price controls caused shortages of beef, at least 40 butchers were arrested, and some of them were held at a military base and later strip searched by police.[268]

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